The Family Tabor by Cherise Wolas

Author:Cherise Wolas [Cherise Wolas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-FOUR

FROM HER STUDY, ROMA hears the laughter of her daughters and granddaughter, their individual characters captured in those different trilling sounds.

No calls from Jeanine McCadden on either voicemail. Should she be the one to initiate, to see how things are going today? Or will it interfere with the therapeutic process? It is a debate she always has; sometimes she preempts a patient’s parents, sometimes not. She doesn’t have much of a handle on Jeanine yet, and none at all on the father, so she’ll let it play out.

She peeks into Simon’s old room, expecting only to find Isabel deep in her nap, but Harry has her curled up in his arms, the two of them sound asleep. She tiptoes past, then pivots, retrieves her cell phone from her study, opens its camera, and snaps a photo. Such a precious moment ought to be memorialized. There is a little guilt, too, in the action. There are so few pictures of Simon as a baby, as a child; their life here in the desert was only a month old when she became pregnant with him, and picture taking was low on the list of settling in, then caring for an infant, for two little girls, for house and husband, getting her practice off the ground. It’s a reflexive, reflective act she tries to remember to undertake—to snap lots of pictures of her grandchildren—so while there is a noticeable absence of Simon in the family photo albums, at least there will be many of Lucy and Isabel, even if they never end up under clear vinyl, are only in that cloud her children talk about, where treasured memories are apparently saved forever these days.

She tiptoes out, and in the hallway emails the photo to everyone, herself included, because no matter how many times her children have shown her how to get her cell phone pictures onto her computer, she can’t remember what to do, nor can Harry. Something with a cord, with a slot? Or are they automatically on her computer if only she knew where to look? Who knows and who cares. Another important thing she’s learned about life all these years: beyond the indispensable requirement of mystery, one must figure out shortcuts for everything that is superfluous.

In the kitchen, she lifts out the jugs of home-brewed iced tea and fresh-squeezed lemonade from the fridge. She knows everyone would prefer she made the Arnold Palmers sweeter, but she likes it this way, a little tart, a pinch from summer.

Dulcet chirps coming from a cell phone. Not hers, which is on the counter, but another, behind her on the island. She leans over, looks at the screen, at a name that hugely intrigues, and though she will be taking an unsupportable liberty, will, without a doubt, be stepping over a very solid line, she is a mother, and the name represents one of those mysteries in life—Valentine Osin, about whom Camille reveals nothing—and she picks up her daughter’s phone, and slides what she’s supposed to slide, and says, “Hello.

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